


Ode to Thievery

by MyVantilene



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: 5 Things, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 19:50:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1700447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyVantilene/pseuds/MyVantilene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Nico stole, and one he was given.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ode to Thievery

The first thing Nico steals is a piece of tiramisu from a New York City bakery. It’s Bianca’s birthday, and it’s raining so hard that their cardboard roof caves in on them, and they have to move all their stuff underneath the firescape. Bianca starts crying, for the mother she can’t remember, for the home she’ll never know and Nico kisses both her cheeks and curls up in her lap with his arms around her, but she doesn’t stop until she falls asleep. Nico sneaks out to the bakery, and slips back before she can notice he’s gone. He wakes her up and presents the gift to her and she cries again, but it’s the happy kind and she tells him that stealing is wrong but it’s sort of a moot point since she savors every bite as if it was mana from heaven and Nico can’t see anything wrong with this.

The second thing Nico steals is a hamburger. He can’t help it. He doesn’t have any money, any source of income, any older siblings to shield him from the moral ambiguity of stealing for survival. He’s starving, hasn’t eaten anything but wildberries for a week, hasn’t had a real meal since he ran from Camp Half-Blood, and he hates that he has to take someone else’s instead of earning his own, but he doesn’t exist in the U.S. social security system, isn’t even a legal immigrant probably, and child labor laws are definitely a thing these days. It should feel good, finally eating actual meat and wheat, but there’s guilt pooling in his gut and he can’t even enjoy it. When he’s done, he wishes he would’ve stuck with the berries.    

The third thing Nico steals is a coat. A really nice one at that, from those ritzy boutiques in the mall, with the dim lighting and air that’s more cologne than oxygen. There’s a lot of coughing involved in the heist, but it’s dark enough that he can shadow-travel away before anyone knows what’s happened. He rips the tag off with his teeth and shrugs it on in a gas station bathroom. In the mold-encrusted mirror, he can see himself drowning in the expensive fabric, and it feels so great, so warm around him. He’s never had anything this nice before, and he savors every moment spent with it on his back.

A day later he passes a Goodwill. He asks the manager how the store works, and it doesn’t take him long to give up the coat, exchanging it with some threadbare t-shirts and a black trenchcoat from the back. He feels bereft without the coat, but in the end it’s fine. He’s used to this kind of thing. Someone will be really happy to have that coat, and Nico only wishes he’d be around to see it.

The fourth thing he steals is a dinner platter of mini sandwiches from the Argo II. He knows technically that’s not stealing, Hazel said he could help himself, but he feels like it is. He hasn’t been forced to room with anyone living for quite sometime, and it’s strange to see how they live. They all have their own cabins, things that are theirs alone, things that they share and Nico… doesn’t really have much of anything, communal or no. He feels like he’s intruding, that this is not his quest and he is not apart of any predestined envoys to save the world, he’s not a hero and he’s not a god, so to live with his father and to live with them, it always feels off. He likes to spend his time up on the mast, that doesn’t really belong to anyone, and he likes to keep himself separate. Once you know things the players don’t, you can’t interfere, but even now that he’s just as clueless and hopeless (maybe even more so) than the rest of them, it still feels like the rule is hanging over him, he can’t interfere, can’t mix what’s his with what’s theirs. And when he takes food from them, he feels like he’s crossed a line somehow. He limits it to small things, the fruits he’s used to most of the time, but an entire dinner platter of mini sandwiches? That’s a bit much and, to be honest, he doesn’t even want to eat it, not with the guilt going at him again, and his lack of appetite has never been considered healthy, but now it was borderline suicidal. He had to eat or he’d die, and he’s no use to anyone dead. So maybe it’s not stealing, or maybe it is, but there are no wild plants aboard the trireme, so it wasn’t really like he had a choice.

The fifth thing Nico steals, he doesn’t even mean to steal. In fact, he tries very hard to keep his kleptomaniac habits under control on this one. He keeps his things separate, keeps himself separate, divides the world up by ownership the same way Hades and his brothers did. Annabeth owns the sea and quite frankly, at this point she can keep it. That’s not the problem. The problem is that Piper owns the sky, she deserves the sky, worked for it, earned it with her sweat and her tears and who is Nico to take that away from her? He doesn’t want to. She’s beautiful and kind and she has done nothing to deserve that kind of heartbreak, not the way Nico has. So why is it he who Jason decides to stay with after the war? Why is he given the sky when he already has his chunk of earth? He’s only ever needed himself before - love, home, family, it was all luxuries and Nico is all basic necessities, all bare bones and armored skin. He does not need Jason, the same way the earth is capable of clambering on without the sky, but he does want Jason and maybe that’s what makes it stealing. Nico knows his role in the story, even dresses the part, is fully aware he’s more of the greedy monster type, hoarding away what good things he can find, and Piper is the one who’s supposed to slay the dragon and take her prince back, but she does neither. Piper’s supposed to hate him, supposed to see him as the enemy, and Jason’s supposed to be desperate to leave him, supposed to see him as the virulent bitterness he embodies, but none of them are very good at acting out their parts. It’d be easier, he thinks, to have them hate him, to have Piper retaliate, for her to slash and stab and behead the beast, or for Jason to fight back, to shout and kick and bite and scream. That he can deal with. That he knows how to handle, has been handling his entire life, knows what it’s like to be hated and feared and avoided like the plague. He understands the sudden whispering that heralds his arrival, the sighs of relief that signify his departure. He understands the nervous ticks and the half-hearted excuses to get away from him, the uneasiness he brings into a room, the coils of death wrapped around him, he understands this, understands that he’s a bad omen, a creature born of hell, that there is no salvation for him. But then Jason will say something dumb like ‘you’ve got an eyelash’ and unabashedly wipe it off his cheek and smile like he can’t think of a better place to be than in the son of Hades’s company, and then Nico is so lost and confused. Because while he understands being hated, he doesn’t quite get being loved. It’s almost unnatural, that there’s someone out there who doesn’t think Nico’s human filth, that actually wants to be around him, and even still... it’s more than that. There’s someone who wants to kiss his scaly skin, to share his fiery breath, to hold his clawed hand and tell him that he’s beautiful. But Nico has never seen himself as anything other than a cockroach, a nuisance, only capable of inspiring fear or disgust, but never love, never in a million years would he have predicted he could be the catalyst of love in someone, especially not someones who are tall, gorgeous sons of the sky. Certainly not blonde Romans who have already been with knock-out daughters of Aphrodite. Going from Piper to Nico must’ve been like leaving the White House for an alleyway in Queens, and Nico just doesn’t get it. There’s no foreseeable merits, nothing he can do better than Piper, no hidden charm that could rival hers, no redeeming qualities, there’s nothing, nothing, nothing. Piper is literally spawn from love, and Nico is, also quite literally, spawn from hell. It should be no competition, no contest, just a landslide in favor of everyone’s favorite daughter of Aphrodite. So why does Jason make him breakfast in bed on the days when he doesn’t want to get up and face the world? Why does he have the rapturous attention of the sky whenever he opens his mouth?  Why does Nico get the happy ending when all he ever does is lie and cheat and steal, why on earth does Jason choose _him_ , of all people? Not a day goes by that Nico doesn’t think it’s the biggest mistake of Jason’s life, that he’s somehow ruined him, robbed him of his common sense, because no one in their right mind would want to be with him unless they were threatened or bribed, and to his knowledge, Jason was persuaded by neither methods. It just doesn’t add up. Nothing adds up. He doesn’t understand what love is and he doesn’t know how to accept it, so the best he can do is just warn Jason this will end in disaster, that in the end he’ll leave him, because that’s what everyone does. And Jason will not heed his warnings, not be dissuaded by Nico’s lack of faith in himself. Because Nico has already stolen his heart and he doesn’t even realize it.      

After a lifetime of being a thief and an outcast, Nico is actually given something, something he can actually keep, something someone wanted him to have, something he didn’t have to steal to obtain. He can hardly believe it, can hardly believe the year he’s spent with Jason isn’t just something he dreamt up to ease the pain of loneliness, can hardly believe the silver key Jason presses into his hands. It’s not really much of a gift, considering Nico can shadow-travel into Jason’s apartment whenever he feels like it, but it’s gesture, it’s the thought that makes it so monumental. It’s an open invitation, a declaration of how Nico will always be welcomed there, proof that he’s not displaced, not homeless anymore. It’s his most prized possession, kept on a chain around his neck at all times, and the promise it symbolizes is the first one to never be broken.  


End file.
